The increasing use of wide area networks such as the Internet has resulted in an explosion in the provision of on-line services. Computer users can access a vast wealth of information and services by utilizing a wide area network to establish a connection with other computers connected to the network.
The Internet is a global network of millions of computers belonging to various commercial and non-profit entities such as corporations, universities, and research organizations. The computer networks of the Internet are connected by gateways that handle data transfer and conversion of messages from a sending network to the protocols used by a receiving network. The Internets collection of networks and gateways use the TCP/IP protocol. TCP/IP is an acronym for Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, a software protocol developed by the Department of Defense.
Typically, the computers connected to a wide area network such as the Internet are identified as either servers or clients. A server is a computer that stores files that are available to other computers connected to the network. A client is a computer connected to the network that accesses the files and other resources provided by a server. To obtain information from a server, a client computer makes a request for a file or information located on the server using a specified protocol. Upon receipt of a properly formatted request, the server downloads the file to the client computer.
The World Wide Web is a system of Internet servers using specified Internet protocols and supporting specially formatted documents. The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web. HTTP defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. The other main standard of the World Wide Web is Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML), which covers how documents and files are formatted and displayed. HTML supports links to other documents, as well as graphics, audio, and video files.
Users access the content contained on the Internet and the World Wide Web with an Internet Browser, which is a software application used to locate and display web pages. Files on a web server are identified by a uniform resource locator. A Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”) is the global address of files and other resources on the Internet. The address indicates the protocol being used and specifies the IP address or the domain name where the file or resource is located. Typically, a URL identifies the name of the server and the path to a desired file on the server. For example, a URL for a web server may be constructed as follows: “http://<server>/<filepath>”, where <server> identifies the server on which the file is located and <filepath> identifies the path to the file on the server. Thus, with the name of the server and the correct path to a file, a properly formatted URL accesses a desired file on a server connected to the World Wide Web.
As one can imagine, there are myriad documents and files accessible over the Internet. However, as discussed above, retrieving desired information on the Internet requires knowledge of an associated URL. Accordingly, if, for example, a consumer wishes to obtain information about or order a particular company's product on the World Wide Web, she must know the URL (data location) corresponding to that company's web site. Conversely, if a corporation desires the public to visit its web site containing information about its products, it will typically advertise its web site and corresponding URL in television, radio, print or other media. A consumer may then enter this URL, assuming he remembers it, into a browser and access the web site.
When a specific URL or data location is not known, search engines are a way of locating desired information. Typically, a user enters key words or search terms into a search engine, which returns a list of URLs corresponding to web sites or USENET groups where the key words or search terms were found. Often a search engine will return a large list of web sites, through which the user must wade in order to locate the few web sites relevant to his query.
Due in part to the proliferation of commercial web sites consumers have become accustomed to the notion that there is a corresponding web site for the vast majority of products and services being commercially offered. Yet, as described above, access to a particular web site on the Internet, requires knowledge of the actual URL or access to a search engine. This becomes problematic, however, when there is no immediate access to a computer connected to the Internet For example, when a radio listener hears a song on the radio and desires more information about it, he must remember the song title and the artist. Later, the listener can enter the song title or the artist as search terms in a typical search engine. Beyond this method, there are no alternative ways of identifying data locations or URLs based upon an observation of a particular product or event. In light of the foregoing it can be seen that a need exists for alternative methods of identifying URLs or other data locations on a computer network.